Boldly Go! Exploring Your Development Options

In my previous article, I described how job enrichment can provide a higher degree of autonomy for the YES! Leader’s team members – which in turn can help them realize a greater level of engagement, commitment, and satisfaction.

But what if you happen to be one of those team members, and what if you have the bad luck not to work for a YES! Leader? If your leader isn’t open to job enrichment ideas, are you consigned to doing the same thing day in and day out until you change jobs?

Hardly! Keep in mind one of the themes of this blog: Anyone can be a YES! Leader, regardless of position. All you need is awareness of the need for change, the application of the ExploreFlexSupport model, and a strong dose of passion.  In this situation, you need to be the YES! Leader.  If you’re not motivated to take steps to advance your career and your development, don’t expect anyone else to be motivated for you.

If you were to be performing on the improv stage, you couldn’t just stand around and wait for your scene partner to initiate an action. If your partner isn’t doing anything to advance the scene, you have to do it. Similarly, if your manager isn’t coming up and offering opportunities to advance your development, then you need to find ways to move ahead – either on your own or by enlisting allies to help.

Fittingly enough, in this situation there’s an actual option for you – what Dr. Beverly Kaye calls the exploratory option - that directly relates to the ExploreFlexSupport model. The exploratory option involves taking your own career reins and striking out into different directions that can give you what you need. 

Here are some exploratory measures that you can take on your own:

·         Enroll in a course or seminar to sharpen your skills or look into a new field of expertise;

·         Pursue a professional certification in your discipline;

·         Conduct reading and research in an area of interest to you.

Here are some examples of the exploratory option that involve marshalling allies to assist you:

·         Become active in a professional or community group – a particularly good way to get practical experience in leading and influencing others;

·         Have lunch with someone who’s doing something of interest to you, just to pick that person’s brain about what he does;

·         If you read a book or article that makes a particular impact on you, find a way to contact the author – no matter how famous – to thank her and to learn more about the topic directly from the expert source.

Autonomy and Job Enrichment

In my previous article, I described the importance of autonomy in a work environment – that is, having a degree of freedom to make choices about important matters that impact what you do and how you do it.

I suspect that many people would object to the notion of “providing autonomy” by saying that a person is hired to fulfill a certain prescribed role for an organization, one that is set out in his job description. However, there are many ways to conceive of “autonomy” aside from the immediate notion of “letting someone do his own thing.”

Autonomy is about choice – and choice is about options, variety, multiple opportunities to expand one’s horizons.  Giving a person the chance to engage in new projects and tasks will help her exercise her decision-making skills and test-drive her ability to make effective choices in her interactions with others.  And studies have repeatedly shown that on-the-job development activities such as these provide the best source of learning – even better than classroom work.

When recast in terms of giving employees more choices and options, autonomy can be directly connected to the concept of job enrichment. Dr. Beverly Kaye of Career Systems International defines job enrichment as “providing challenge, growth, and renewal in a current position.” Enrichment means changing something about the current job – shifting the balance of tasks, taking some tasks off the plate, adding new responsibilities or special projects – as a way of (in Dr. Kaye’s words) “allowing employees to take on different tasks and responsibilities or to accomplish them in new ways that promote autonomy and creativity.”

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

Seeking ways to provide job enrichment for your team members is an example of an Explore behavior in the ExploreFlexSupport model. What would happen if you were to do the following?

·         Give a planning or problem-solving task to two of your team members who haven’t worked together much (if at all) and ask them to collaborate to come up with a solution.

·         Provide a team member the opportunity to take on the role of liaison to another internal customer or external partner.

·         Ask each of your team members what task they would like to do more of in their current role – and then find a way for them to actually do more of it.

·         Reflect on the one on-the-job development experience that had the biggest positive impact on your career. Then ask others in your 360-degree world (managers, peers, direct reports) to identify their most powerful development experiences. Use the list as a source of ideas for exploring enrichment opportunities for your team members.

For more job enrichment ideas, see Dr. Beverly Kaye’s article Enrich: Energize the Job.

Autonomy: Motivating Others by Loosening the Reins

I’ve written quite a bit in The YES! Leader about the factors that motivate people to be energized and engaged in their work. I just finished reading Dan Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us and was struck by the insightful connections he draws among some of the same sources and concepts I’ve been surveying in The YES! Leader.

Today I’d like to deal with one particular aspect of Drive: Engaging people by creating an environment in which they can do their best work.

In Drive, Pink focuses on the role of autonomy as one of the most important factors in motivating people to achieve and excel. “Autonomy,” says Pink, “means acting with choice.” Autonomy is the discretion to decide how we’re going to do our work, or even to choose what tasks and projects we’ll pursue.

The power of autonomy is reflected in Vance Packard's commonly cited definition of leadership as "the art of getting others to want to do something you are convinced should be done.” The words want to are key here. People generally resist being pulled by the hand or pushed from behind; they prefer to lead themselves toward a goal that they’ve deliberately chosen to pursue. The former course breeds mere compliance (and thus doing just enough to get by), the latter deep commitment (and thus searching for new, creative ways to address problems and opportunities).

Pink cites a number of studies that show the motivating power of autonomy. In one study, writes Pink:

“Researchers found greater job satisfaction among employees whose bosses offered ‘autonomy support.’ These bosses saw issues from the employee’s point of view, gave meaningful feedback and information, provided ample choice over what to do and how to do it, and encouraged employees to take on new projects. The resulting enhancement in job satisfaction, in turn, led to higher performance on the job.”

Encouraging new projects … seeing things through others’ eyes … providing autonomy support … in this brief description alone, Pink echoes the components of the ExploreFlexSupport model that can guide a YES! Leader to inspire others to become the best they can be.

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

Of course, allowing autonomy has its limits. Any leader needs to strike an appropriate balance between giving leeway and giving direction, depending on the experience of the individual and the needs of the situation.

But if you find yourself reluctant to explore ways to provide autonomy to others, ask yourself: Am I holding tightly onto the reins because of the needs of the situation – or because of my own needs?

Next time I’ll explore some practical tips for providing more autonomy to others in their work lives.

What's Your Brand? Using the ExploreFlexSupport Model to Create Value for Others

I’ve described the YES! Leader as anyone (not just a people manager) who applies the ExploreFlexSupport model to his or her daily attitudes and actions. In the same way that the model guides performance improvisers in their spontaneous onstage performances, using Exploring, Flexing, and Supporting behaviors can help you achieve your goals in the brave new world of constant change.

To meet the challenges of this ever-shifting improvisational world, you need to consider new ways of thinking about charting and navigating your career journey. The ExploreFlexSupport model can help you here as well.

EXPLORE: Performance improvisers can’t just wait around onstage for something to happen. They need to take action to create a scene that will tell an interesting (and concise) story.  Similarly, the YES! Leader needs to explore her own skills and background to tell an interesting (and concise) story … about herself.

Tom Peters notes that an individual needs to think of herself, not as an employee, but as a brand – a provider of products or services that confers value in a unique, distinctive way. To be a brand, says Peters, “you’ve got to be a broad-gauged visionary – a leader, a teacher, a farsighted ‘imagineer.’”  In other words … an explorer.

The good news is that you may already be that “imagineering leader” – but just haven’t yet acknowledged that fact or put it into words.

The career fit concept can help you identify your own distinctive brand. What unique combination of skills do you bring to your work? How do your interests – your passions – shine through in what you do? How clear are you about your core values – and how do they (and can they) connect with others’ values?  Finally, how can this one-of-a-kind combination make a difference in other people’s lives?

Explore your answers to these questions and then sum them up in a single statement of 10 words or less. (For example, “A creative professional consultant, coach, and catalyst for action.”) This is your essential message, your concise story … your own Brand You.

FLEX: In my earlier article, I noted how the traditional career ladder is being replaced by a career lattice. Peters uses other apt metaphors for this shift: “A career is now a checkerboard. Or a maze. It’s full of moves that go sideways, forward, slide on the diagonal, even go backward when it makes sense. A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand.”

Navigating this web of potential moves can be both freeing and daunting. While you can plan for much of the journey, ultimately you’ll need to adopt the performance improviser’s mindset of “being ready for the next scene – whatever it might be.” Keep your mind open to possibilities, plan what you can, but ultimately realize the futility (and the energy-depleting effect) of trying to utterly control every outcome. Life has a funny way of not always molding itself to our assumptions and expectations.

Learn to trust your in-the-moment instincts. If you’ve done a good job of getting clear about your essential message – your Brand You – they won’t let you down.

SUPPORT: Many people criticize the “personal branding” concept as encouraging self-absorption and an overfocus on “Me Me Me.” And granted, many people do fall prey to those traps. Tellingly, though, the very first requisite that Peters sets out for effective branding is: “You’ve got to be a great teammate and a supportive colleague.”

A performance improviser can’t succeed alone; improv is a team effort, requiring mutual trust and support. Similarly, your brand can succeed only if you’ve built a solid network of other people (team members, collaborators, potential advocates) who have trust that you’ll give value back to them.  If you’re perceived as always wanting something from your network – if that outstretched palm of yours is seen as less of a helping hand and more of a grabbing hand – then you’re likely to gain an unwanted reputation as someone who always takes but never gives.

Share articles and ideas. Put people in contact with each other. Comment and build on others’ posts on newsgroups and social media. Keep a large supply of notecards and send personalized “Thank You”s and “Kudos” on a regular basis. These are just a few of the things you can do to gain for your Brand You a reputation for generosity and support.

Explore your history and find your essential story ... chart your course while staying flexible ... support others along the way ... and above all think of yourself as a creator of value in all that you do. This will in turn create value for you - and for your brand.

The Daily Improviser Is Now The YES! Leader

I am excited to announce that, with this article, I am changing the name of The Daily Improviser blog to The YES! Leader.

Even with the name change, improvisation will still be the unifying theme of The YES! Leader blog.  As I have for the past three years, I will continue to focus primarily on the ways in which concepts drawn from improvisational theater can be used in non-performance settings – especially in business enterprises. I will also continue to show how improvisational themes and attitudes weave through some of the best thinking in a wide variety of fields – organizational theory, history, psychology, language, the arts, to name just a few.

And now, in best improv fashion, I will say: Yes, And … the time has come to shift my focus to the person who applies these improvisational principles to his or her daily actions and interactions.   I call this person the YES! Leader, because, as in performance improv, being positive and open is an essential mindset for anyone who wants to successfully navigate a world of continuous change. Just as performance improvisers must focus as much on the what (entertaining an audience) as the how (working as a team with their fellow players), the YES! Leader must give equal attention to both achieving results and building relationships.  The YES! Leader can do this by utilizing what I call the ExploreFlexSupport Model as the basic toolset for his daily leadership practice.

In reframing my blog, I also plan to devote more attention to practical tools and concepts that you can put to immediate use in your YES! Leader practice.  In the spirit of coaching, though, I’ll often focus this attention more in the direction of “asking” versus “telling” – that is, rather than always giving advice, I’ll include questions, challenges, and reflections for you to consider.

As I embark on this next leg of the journey, I want to emphasize two important points:

·         Anyone – not just a people manager - can be a YES! Leader. Leadership is about influence, not position.

·         You don’t have to act like a performance improviser in order to use improvisational principles in your daily life. Improv is more about attitudes than skills.

Hang on … here we go!

Career Development: Don't Imitate an Imitation

I just finished reading Gerald Nachman’s outstanding book about the Ed Sullivan Show, Right Here on Our Stage Tonight, and was particularly intrigued by the story of one of the greatest of all impressionists, Will Jordan, generally considered the first person to do an Ed Sullivan imitation. Jordan’s Sullivan was so spot-on, and became so well known, that it became the virtual blueprint for the avalanche of Ed Sullivan impersonations that followed.  As Nachman notes, “Many of the [later] imitations were based on, or rudely stolen from, Jordan’s concept of Sullivan.”

Reading Jordan’s story prompted me to wonder: How often do people try to chart their own lives and careers by “imitating an imitation”?

Think of it like this: A person may embark on a certain career path based on what other people say she should be doing. Or she reads articles about “the top growth careers for the next decade” and thinks that money and opportunity should be the driving factors behind her career choices. Or she leaps onto the manager track because she hears that that’s the only way to make career “progress” (which she equates with getting promotions).

By listening to these outside voices, a person can form a mental image of who she should be and what she should be doing as she pursues her career. But this person in her head is often a pale imitation of who she really is, can be, and wants to be. So instead of trying to identify and capitalize on her true strengths and unique value, she spends her development efforts struggling to emulate this imitation self.

She then wakes up one day to wonder:  Why don’t things feel right? Why do I feel like an imposter?

The remedy for avoiding this “imitating the imitator” syndrome?  First, find your own authentic career fit. Dr. Beverly Kaye, CEO of Career Systems International, describes “career fit” as a match of three things – personal values, skills, and interests – with your current situation. Get clear about each of these three career fit components for you, and don’t shy away from exploring ways to realize the match – even negotiating with your manager to modify your current job.

Second, open your mind to the idea that, when it comes to career progress, “up is not the only way” (to quote the title of one of Dr. Kaye’s books).  Instead of a career ladder, think of it as a career lattice - a multi-directional model in which you can move up, sideways, or even back down, depending on your career or personal goals and your own assessment of career fit.  Again, expand your thinking as to how you can customize a path that works for you.

Keep in mind that career development starts with a clear understanding of your own unique, ideal combination of values, skills, and interests. Don’t imitate an imitation. If you’re going to model your career development actions on anybody, model yourself on an original – your own self-created vision of who you are and what will work for you.

For more resources on career development, see the Career Systems International website.

What Is Hip? An Example of Powerful Communication

In previous articles, I’ve described one of the hallmarks of great communicators: They connect their message with something the audience can relate to and care about.  A colleague of mine once described an experience of hers that I thought represented an outstanding example of communicating with impact.

As she was preparing to conduct a class in making effective presentations, my colleague met with the leader of the participant group to gather some background on the group's learning needs. The leader mentioned that members of the group frequently had to make persuasive presentations to senior leaders but too often became scattered and unfocused in their pitches.  The leader told her that his team often had “only one shot” at making an impression but frequently didn’t think through in advance exactly what they would say.

Armed with this information, my colleague went into the effective-presentations training and addressed the group with the following opening:

"I understand that many of you often only have one shot at making an impression with senior leaders, is that right?"

(Nods and murmurs.)

"Well, let me ask you this: If you only have that one shot, how effective do you think you'll be if you shoot from the hip?"

(And here she struck a "shoot from the hip" pose.)

Immediately the group sat up and took notice. Just by making this simple analogy (complete with pantomime), my colleague led them to realize the ineffectiveness of taking a scattershot approach to communicating with such an important audience. They were ready now to listen to ideas and approaches for thinking through their presentations in advance.

I can imagine as well that, by incorporating the leader’s “only one shot” comment in the training session, my colleague served to build her own credibility in his eyes.

  

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

My colleague’s story is a great everyday example of a device that performance improvisers refer to as a callback - that is, a reference in one scene to something that was said in a previous (and usually unrelated) scene from the same performance. Using callbacks truly challenges a performer to be fully present and to quickly note connections between things that otherwise might seem totally unrelated.

As a Yes! Leader, what would happen if you were to do the following?

• Listen for key words and expressions – especially metaphors – in others’ speech as a guide to what they care about, how they think, and how they communicate.
• Ask people what matters to them – and then treat them in a way that shows you heard them.
• Explore the topic of building rapport with others.

Abraham Lincoln: The Great Communicator

In my previous article, I described one of the hallmarks of powerful communicators: The ability to connect their message with something else that listeners care about, as a way of influencing the listeners’ actions or attitudes. I also suggested that the Yes! Leader look to examples of great communicators from history to gain inspiration for crafting powerful messages.

I thought it might be fitting on this February 12 – Abraham Lincoln’s birthday – to cite one such example: The Gettysburg Address.

Quick, what do you recall of the Gettysburg Address? Of course you know that it was delivered at the height of the American Civil War. And,if you’re like most people, you probably recall the opening words:

Four score and seven years ago …

Perhaps you thought that Lincoln was merely using a colorful turn of phrase to refer to a particular date in the past. But actually, in those few words, Lincoln immediately signaled the intent of his speech and the conceptual bridge he wanted to build.

“Four score and seven years” from the date of his speech (November 19, 1863) referred to the iconic year of 1776 and the beginning of the American Revolution. By harking back to that event, Lincoln wanted to reframe the war’s purpose as less of a campaign to restore the Union, more of an effort to reconnect with the principles of freedom and equality upon which the nation was built. His intent was to link these principles (and who in his audience would dispute them?) with the great act - the Emancipation Proclamation - that marked the shift in the war’s focus.

Four score and seven years ago … in six words, Lincoln encapsulated his entire purpose of putting the upheaval of the Civil War in a larger context that transcended the political turmoil that preceded the taking up of arms. And by packing meaning into every part of his 268-word, two-minute speech, he created perhaps the most famous “sticky message” (remembered, understood, and inspiring) in American history.

Informing Does Not Equal Influencing

In my previous article, I described the distinction between informing and influencing and emphasized the importance of not relying on information alone to persuade an audience.

So – are there any situations where “informing” does reign supreme? How about the world of science? Aren’t scientists swayed only by the weight of factually proven information?

Not necessarily – and once again we turn to the story of the University of Wisconsin psychologist Harry Harlow for an example.

In my previous article on Harlow, I described his experiments with baby monkeys who preferred a terrycloth-covered wire “mother” to an uncovered wire “mother.” As I mentioned, at the time of the experiments, Harlow faced a huge uphill battle to get his revolutionary conclusions on the importance of parental nurturing accepted by the psychology establishment – and by the public at large.

So, even in the supposedly data-driven world of science, Harry Harlow clearly understood that he needed to persuade as much as inform. And he did so in a most ingenious way that brought his experiments home to generations of people – in the scientific community and the lay community alike. As author Deborah Blum describes it:

“[Harlow] needed the surrogate [mother] to look like more than a bundle [of cloth]. It needed personality. It needed a head and a face. If monkeys were going to look at this substitute mother, it needed to look back at them. And it needed to look back at the human observers, too; it needed to mean something real to people. Harry wanted them all – not just psychologists but mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles and stepparents and grandparents – to think about connection and affection.”

At the time, many people within Harry’s scientific team resisted the idea of fabricating a monkey-like head for the terrycloth “mother,” calling it “showmanship,” something beneath a real scientist. But as one of his team members later recalled:

“So [the head] might not have been [scientifically] relevant. But it was to the outside world, because once people looked at the surrogate like a mother – made a connection to human mothers as well – then you could start talking about things like mother love.” [emphasis added]

In this way, Harry anticipated one of the key points of the Heath brothers’ SUCCES principle in the book Made to Stick: To influence people, you need to get them to care about your message. And one way to do that is to connect your message with something else they care about.

Certainly Harry’s act of “showmanship” wouldn’t have been enough to persuade people if he didn’t have solid data to support his message (again, consistent with the Heaths’ point about creating Credible messages). But the point is that Harry knew that, without connecting his research to something the lay person could relate to and cared about, the data itself wouldn’t have had the impact he wanted to make on the wider world.

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

A Yes! Leader flexes his perspective in order to see the world through others’ eyes. In your own leadership practice, what would happen if you were to:

·         First inquire about others’ concerns, motivators, and values rather than immediately try to sway them to a certain point of view?

·         Think about creative things you can do to really bring your message home to others in a concrete way?

·         Research examples (from business, history, and elsewhere) of people who successfully translated an abstract concept into a concrete communication that connected with people “where they lived”?

Show - Don't Tell!

I’ve written frequently about the book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath and have been a strong advocate for the authors’ message about the elements of effective communication. Taking a page from Made to Stick, I’ve created a Commander’s Intent for the book’s main message as follows:

Informing Does Not Equal Influencing!

In other words, just dumping an excruciatingly comprehensive 500-page report or a 97-slide Powerpoint presentation with multiple indentation levels on an audience isn’t guaranteed to sway them to the message contained therein (if in fact there is one).

Now, clearly there is a time and a place for providing information – say, when a senior leader requests a status update on a high-stakes project. Yet as I frequently advise people, if you have any kind of persuasive purpose in a given communication – to prompt action, to shape opinion, to elicit caring – then you need to do more than just report data. You need to connect your message to something the audience can easily relate to – and care about. (Yes, even the senior leader in that status meeting.)


Next time I'll provide an example of "connecting with the audience" from an unlikely source: The world of scientific research.

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REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

Performance improvisers are taught a simple guideline: Show, don’t tell! For example, don’t inform the audience that the scene takes place in Spain by saying “Here we are in Spain” – connect the audience with “Spain” in a concrete way by your actions.

For the Yes! Leader, what would happen if you were to do the following?

• Talk less about what you believe in and value, act more in a way that demonstrates those beliefs and values.
• Focus less on pushing your own agenda, focus more on the questions, concerns, and ideas of your listeners.
• Always be sure to address the two key questions in any listener's mind: WII? (What Is It?) and WSIC? (Why Should I Care?)